In a Companion Column, KFF President and CEO Drew Altman Analyzes Why the Election Represents a Fork in the Road for the Federal Government’s Role in Health Care

June 25, 2024 - KFF on Monday launched a new side-by-side comparison tool of the records and policy positions of President Biden and former President Trump across a range of key health policy issues. In a related “Beyond the Data” column, KFF President and CEO Drew Altman examines why the election represents a “fork in the road” on the federal government’s role in health care.

While this is not an election like in the past where health care reform is a central issue being debated, health care is an important issue for voters, and the parties’ presumptive nominees have sharply divergent records and positions, detailed in the new side-by-side comparison tool.

The tool provides a quick overview of the candidates’ records as president, positions, public statements, and proposed policies on 15 health care topics: the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, abortion, contraception, LGBQ health, gun violence, public health, prescription drug prices, Medicare, health care costs, mental health, opioid use, long-term care, global health, and immigrant health coverage.

The tool will be continuously updated throughout the campaign as new information and policy details emerge. 

In Altman’s accompanying column, Unraveling the Mysteries of Biden vs Trump on Health Care, he writes that comparing the candidates on health care “was an especially tricky assignment” this time.

“With a president running for re-election whose policies are already set, and a former president who shuns policy details, both camps are skipping over the usual policy planning process, and the routine job of describing the differences between the two candidates on health issues is a thousand-piece puzzle,” Altman writes.

Beyond the specifics of the candidates’ records and positions on health issues, Altman writes, “the differences are bigger, amounting to a fork in the road in direction on the role of the federal government in health and federal health spending.” Trump, in particular, “avoids policy and policy details” so “the directions he might take have to be deduced from remarks he has made here and there, positions he took when he was president, and most of all, from the policy positions conservative Republican organizations have taken.”
Source: KFF